Making Myself, Selling Myself, Playing with Myself

A Melodrama

A Melodrama is a personal narrative acted out by five toy figurines I had made in my own likeness. When I first acquired the LiZes, I immediately began forming an attachment to them. A Melodrama explores my relationship to these toy objects as extensions of myself. I am both caretaker and oppressor. The LiZes allow me to explore my understanding of self, my ever-shifting identity, and my intimacy with myself.
In addition to the video, the toy LiZes have been mass produced and are available for sale to investigate the generation of value through the commodification and objectification of my identity on the margins.

Making Myself, Selling Myself, Playing with Myself is an ongoing multimedia project that is continually becoming and investigating myself and my identity in relation to others' understanding of me and my identity, using these conversations and experiences to provoke larger dialogue about topics including but not limited to (and also always evolving and changing): queerness, gender, power structures, and deviance.

In Making Myself, Selling Myself, Playing with Myself, I began thinking about my relationship to my body and identity and the experience of violence I go through by objectifying and commodifying myself as art object. I wanted to push this relationship even further and so I decided to make myself into an actual object. So what kind of object? Toys are interesting as these tools of socialization and normalization of behavior in particular gender socialization. We learn so much about how we are supposed to be through toys as children. I wanted to create a new narrative in that familiar format.

When my first Lizes arrived, I immediately was attached to them and I became interested in my relationship to myself as toy or object. I was both caretaker and oppressor. A Melodrama explores my intimacy with myself and how they allow me to understand myself in new ways as well.

A Commercial comes from an interest in the notion of value and what does or does not have social or cultural value in our society. Generally as a non gender conforming nonbinary trans queer in this society, I feel not only less valued but also often invisible -- maybe I'm not real?? So as I sell myself, I'm experimenting with generating value for my identity, body, and narrative.